Chardonnay's birth 17th August 2008 *LONG*

This is a very long birth story because i have included some of the pregnancy issues i had. I think it is important and relates to her story.

Chardonnay Olivia Janaye
Birth Story


Background
I had a relatively easy pregnancy to begin with. I was anxious due to me having a previous late loss at 19wks 5 days but my health was quite good. I was putting on weight steadily, my BP (which I normally have high BP and am medicated for) lowered so I was able to half my dose of BP meds and my pregnancy was cruising along at a fast speed.
At 20 wks the reflux started playing up. I had this quite bad with my previous baby so knew to head straight for the Zantac and sleep with lots of pillows. This worked well until 29 wks.
On Sunday 15th June I woke up early (about 6:30/7am) with heartburn and reflux. I immediately thought ?That?s strange, I shouldn?t have the burning there). It was time to take my Zantac anyway so I got up and took it. Half an hour later there was no relief from the burning and reflux, it was actually worse, which had never happened before. I got up and went to the bathroom to spit out the excess saliva I was getting from the reflux and with no warning started vomiting into the basin. About 2/3 the way through the vomit it started coming out bright red, I got my DH to check it to make sure it was blood like I thought it was, he said ?Yes, ring the hospital?.
So I rang the hospital and they said to come straight in. The burning and reflux had stopped after the vomit but I went in anyway to get checked. About an hour later the burning and reflux started again and got worse and worse and again with no warning I vomited. It was coffee ground colour this time. And I felt good again. The OB came to examine me and he touched my stomach. Within 5 mins the burning and reflux had started again and I vomited the coffee ground colour again. The OB said he wanted to test it for blood so he put a strip in it and mumbled to himself ?That?s blood alright and that?s about as bad as it gets?.
Within 10 mins someone came in and said to me we need to get a drip into you to give you fluids and something to stop the vomiting and burning and we are opening the Adult Special Care Unit for you because we can not send you to the ward and risk you having another bleed and no one noticing, you need constant monitoring. It took ages to get a canula into me because my extremities started shutting down due to blood loss and dehydration. I was also very cold at this point. I got into the ASCU and was watched like a hawk. About midnight the burning started again, but they couldn?t give me any more medication to stop it because I had been given everything already and it was hours off the next dose. So the mw called down for a ?Pink Lady?. She brought it to me, but didn?t tell me it would make my mouth and throat go numb, so that freaked me out a bit when that happened. It stopped the burning though.
About 6am she came and took my blood to see if my HB levels had dropped, which would indicate more internal bleeding. Within half an hour, I got up and went to the toilet and she came up to me and said ?You have had another bleed?. 3 days before this had happened my HB levels were 96. When I got to the hospital they were 92 and within hours had dropped to 79. I think it was that mw that said I was going to need a blood transfusion. I went to the toilet and by the time I came out the OB was coming in cos the mw had paged her. She spoke to the mw, then came up to me and said ?You need a blood transfusion, are you happy to accept it? Your levels are below transfusion levels?. What could I say, if I needed it, I needed it. Then there were people running everywhere, people checking me, people bringing in the blood and hooking it up. I rang DH crying and he dropped everything and came in.
They then called an ambulance to take me to a nearby hospital to have an endoscopy as I was in a maternity hospital. At 9am the ambulance came, I needed a mw to go with me because I was having the blood transfusion. We waited all day for the endoscopy in the ED. About 2pm they came to get me. I was wearing a big gown so they couldn?t see my belly. I was holding my belly when I got up to the endoscopy place cos the baby was kicking my stomach. The nurse said to me ?Are you in pain?? I said ?No, the baby is kicking?, she said ?Baby? We didn?t know you were pregnant, I don?t think the dr will do the endoscopy now?. (They were told several times I was 29 wks before I was sent to them). The dr came in and said he would rather not do an endoscopy on me while pregnant and that he could send me back to my hospital treating me how he would treat me doing the endoscopy or not. So we got transferred back to my hospital about 7pm that night. On Tuesday they sent me back to ASCU for the afternoon to have an iron infusion. I spent 3 days on an IV med and fluids. I was not allowed to eat for days. Then they allowed me to eat but it was soft foods (soup and custard). I spent 5 days in hospital and went home on a capsule version of the IV med I had for 3 days.
The next time I went to clinic (31wks 5 days), my OB said she would induce me on the 17th august at 38 wks 1 day.
Over the following weeks I had regular growth scans and ctgs because baby was measuring small and because of the meds I was on for my stomach.
On Saturday 9th August I went to the hospital to get checked because my stomach was playing up and I was having contractions about 7 mins apart. They then moved to 5 mins apart and then 2 mins apart when I was at the hospital. They did a VE but cervix wasn?t doing much. I went to the toilet and I was bleeding and contractions were more uncomfortable so I was told to go walking for the next couple of hours to see if I was in labour or not. A check about 3 hrs later showed no change and the contractions were getting further apart, so they let me go home with strict instructions to come straight back in if things got worse. It all settled down and I went to clinic on Thursday 14th august.
At clinic OB wanted to check my cervix to see if she could break them on Sunday 17th or if I would need the gel. My cervix was fine to break my waters so she sent me off and I ran around doing last minute things to get ready for Sunday.
Friday morning I had a show!! I had a bit more on Saturday too but I didn?t go into labour.


The Birth
Sunday morning DH and I got up at 6am and left for the hospital. We stopped at McDonalds for breakfast and got to the hospital at 7am like we were meant too.
Walking into the delivery ward it was like a big reunion. The mw (Annie) at the main desk was the mw who had come in the ambulance with me at 29 wks. She was happy to see I made it to 38 wks because she knew I was stressed I might deliver the baby at 29 wks. She looked me up on the computer and said ?Room 8, I will take you down there? we got to my delivery suite and Annie said ?Your mw today is Laura, she will be here in a minute?. My mouth dropped and I said ?Your joking!!? and started laughing. Annie said ?No, why??. Laura was the nurse I had when I delivered my baby I lost at 19wks 5 days, she was a gorgeous person and stayed hours over her shift to help me and DH and comfort us etc. At the time (2005) she was a RN, but since then had trained to become a mw. She has always kept tabs on me and at 34 wks had found me having a ctg and we had joked about her making sure she got me on the 17th. Annie was stunned as I told her this and then Laura walked in and was cheering and all excited in the doorway to see us. It turned out Laura had just been put on my room, she hadn?t said anything, so that made it even more fantastic and she was meant to be there to share a happy moment with us finally. While us and Laura and Annie were all laughing about what had happened, Annie left and just after she did another mw walked past my door and came back and said ?Hi?, she had nursed me on the ward when I was 29 wks.
About 7:50am my OB came in. She said she had to do rounds at 8am and a cs at 9:30am and that she would come back before the cs to break my waters because she didn?t want to do them now and have me give birth when she was doing the cs. She wanted to deliver my baby.
We sat around chatting and about 9am (I think) my OB came back to break my waters. This was quite uncomfortable and full on. My OB tried breaking them with a big white plastic hook. Laura had to apply pressure to the top of my fundus because the baby was so high up. My OB could get my waters but no matter what she did they did not want to break. I could feel my waters being tugged on, on the inside (an interesting experience that is, didn?t hurt but wasn?t a nice feeling either). I could also feel her scratching me in the birth canal and cervix as she tried so hard to break them. In addition to this her phone kept ringing and because her senior registrar wasn?t there she had to answer it. At first she was taking her gloves off to answer it then getting more gloves on and coming back to have another go, but it started ringing again as soon as she hung up, so she got Laura to answer it for her and hold it at her ear so she didn?t have to change position. She did stop trying to break my waters while she was on the phone though thank goodness. After about 40 mins of trying to break them and her phone non stop ringing she said ?Im going to give you a break, go and sort out these people and do this cs, I will be back when its all sorted out, get up and walk to try and get things moving till I come back?. Laura told me that I must have had a good protein supply during the pregnancy, because protein in your diet helps make the amniotic sac strong.
So I walked around. I had a fair amount of bleeding now because of all the fiddling about. About 11am my OB came back. This time she tried a different method and used the finger hook (goes over her finger with a hook on the end). Laura applied fundal pressure again. It took about 5 to 10 mins but finally my waters broke and thankfully no phone calls interrupted my OB this time. My OB commented that my waters were blood stained but she thought it was from all the fiddling around before and she was happy, she let the waters out until the baby?s head came down, which wasn?t long.

The atmospere was so lovely. My OB stood around chatting to us, helping DH eat his lollies and educating us on the english term for different things like lollies and sweets.

I started contracting pretty much straight away and on the first contraction baby?s hb dropped dramatically down to between 90 and 100. Laura got up and called the anaesthetist to put my epidural in because I have quick labours they need to get them in early. My OB said to Laura before she left the room ?If the baby keeps carrying on like this (pointing to the hb drop) I want her monitored throughout the whole epidural?. My OB left and baby did another hb drop with a contraction, this worried me a little but Laura said we would just keep an eye on it. Thankfully baby didn?t do it again. The anaesthetist rang back and Laura told him I was contracting ?4 in 10?, (4 in 10 mins) which I found out is what you need to have changes to your cervix, anything less doesn?t do the job normally. The anaesthetist was there about 5 to 10 mins later. By this time I had another OB in putting in a canula, she tried twice and collapsed both veins, so the anaesthetist took over and got it in straight away. He explained the epidural to me and then set to work. My last epidural had not been put in properly, was painful and only worked down one side, I told him this so he was very careful and constantly asked if I felt not right and which leg it was in. He adjusted it until it was in properly and then he put in the medicine. It felt warm from my bottom to my legs and then my legs were numb. They helped me into the bed with my legs and the anaesthetist gave me more medicine. It felt wonderful. My legs and feet were all numb, I could move them a bit but wouldn?t have been able to stand and I could feel every contraction but it wasn?t painful. Laura told me I got the good epidural, I got a CSE, which they give to women when they are not far off delivering, because it works in 5 mins instead of 15 mins or more. During the whole epidural I had to have the ctg monitor on but bending forward caused the ctg to pick up my hb instead, so we thought baby?s hb had dropped to 90 again, but they figured out it was just me.
So the epidural was in and working by 11:30am but my contractions had slowed to ?3 in 10?, which Laura said was not enough, so she turned on the cyntocin drip slightly. Just after 12 I started getting a pain in my back that at first was only there during contractions but soon it was there non stop and I could not handle it. Laura had hooked up a self administering syringe to my epidural where I could give myself 4ml every 15 mins but it wasn?t strong enough.
Just after 12noon Laura announced I was in established labour. By 12:30pm the epidural was not working as well and the top ups I was giving myself weren?t doing anything so Laura gave me another dose like the anaesthetist had. 5 mins later the pain had eased. Laura and I were talking about my OB coming back to deliver and Laura said ?Do you mean im going to have to fight her to catch this baby?, it was funny that they were both wanting to deliver and in the end neither of them did.
Just after 12:30pm my OB came to check on me. She said ?Baby?s head is too high and your bladder is full, you have a few hours ahead of you yet?, then she turned to Laura and said ?When she feels pressure, call me cos Kristi will kill me if I don?t get here to deliver?.
My OB left and Laura asked me if I wanted a catheter because my bladder was full and she didn?t want me getting up to walk to the toilet with the epidural I had. So I said yes, thinking it would be an in out catheter like I have had before, but she put a stay in catheter in. My bladder drained and with the next contraction I felt movement down there.
Within 20 mins Laura was calling my OB back. She came straight away and said ?Feeling some pressure are we??, I said ?A bit yeah?. So she checked me and I was fully dilated. She said ?The heads right there?, Laura got excited and said ?Ohhh is is plus 1??, my OB said ?No, more like plus 2? and Laura got even more excited. My OB said to me ?Right you can push with the next contraction if you want, or you can wait a bit longer?. I said ?No, I will push?.
I started pushing and it felt like nothing was happening. Then another mw came to the door and said she was the afternoon shift. My OB said ?We are having a baby in here, come in if you want? She came in and DH said ?Can you take photos for us?? which she was happy to do.
So I was pushing, some pushes were good, others I wasn?t pushing right and when I wasn?t my OB let me know cos she had her hand on babys head and could tell what was going on. I think she was also helping to ease babys head out to make it a bit easier for me. They had turned off the cyntocin by this time and my contractions were very strong. Registering at about 130 on the ctg. I kept pushing for what seemed like ages. Not long into pushing my stomach started hurting, but I just had to keep going and try to ignore it. Laura and my OB suggested I get on all fours but I quickly said ?No, I don?t want to move? and they just laughed at me and said ?Ok?. Suddenly I got very tired and just wanted to sleep and I told them that, they laughed and said ?You cant sleep yet, you have to have a baby first?.
It was a gorgeous atmosphere. Lots of laughter and light hearted joking and LOTS of encouragement from all of them when I was making progress. My OB sounded like a cheer squad going ?That?s it, keep going, that?s it, your doing well, that?s it!!!!?
Finally I felt some movement. My OB said ?Stop pushing and pant?, I did what she asked and I felt the head move out on its own. My OB said ?Baby?s got a haircut just like her dad? (DH is thinning on top), I said ?What? She?s bald?? My Ob replied with ?Not quite, she has a little bit of hair?. All that heartburn and reflux and she didn?t have much hair!!
I then felt more movement and the shoulders were coming out. My OB or Laura (not sure who or if it was both) said ?Reach down and grab your baby?. Im not normally one to do that sort of thing, ive never wanted a mirror during birth or anything, I like to just get on with the task at hand, but something told me to do it. I remember reaching down and grabbing an arm, I couldn?t see what was going on down there so Laura helped me get my baby under her arms and I pulled her up and onto my chest. I delivered my own baby!! It was 1:24pm.
I started crying and kissing and looking at my new baby. She looked so familiar to me but I couldn?t work out why. She looked like our other kids but I couldn?t figure out which one. Quick check, yes it is a girl like we were told.
DH cut the cord and I had the needle in my leg to make the placenta come away. Within about 10 mins my OB tugged on the cord and the placenta came out. Looking at my baby she looked so blue to me and had stopped crying and wasn?t moving, I started panicking and said to Laura ?Is she ok?? Laura didn?t say anything, she had a quick look at her, reached over and sort of pinched/tickled her skin between her cord and her bits, immediately she let out a cry and started going pink. I was so relieved.
My OB checked for tears and grazes and thankfully I didn?t have any. During this time Laura put the clamp on our baby?s cord and then she said to me ?Would you like to cut the rest of the cord to give her, her belly button??. I was shocked, I had never been asked this before. Of course I wanted to cut the rest of her cord. Laura gave me the scissors and with my baby laying on my chest I cut the rest of her cord, it wasn?t as hard as I thought it would be, just the end bit was hard to cut, a bit like rubber.
Myself, DH, Laura and my OB all had a bit of down time where we looked at my new baby, everyone cuddled her, we took pictures and checked out her hands and feet and just chatted. It was so nice. It was a lovely feminine atmosphere. It was empowering to have so many women by my side supporting me and encouraging me.
DH and I spent the next 2 hrs bonding with our baby. When she was born, she was left on my chest for a good hour. Nicola, the other mw who took the pictures, then weighed her, measured her, dressed her, and took her obs. She gave her back to me and we had our first breast feed. While I was feeding, Nicola checked my placenta. She brought it over to my bedside and explained it all to me, it was very interesting.
Dh then started ringing everyone to tell them our little girl had arrived safe and sound.
Chardonnay Olivia Janaye
Born Sunday 17th August 2008
At 1:24 pm
Weight: 2840gm or 6pd 4
Length: 49cm
HC: 33cm
Labour time: 50 mins first stage, 24 mins second stage. Total 1hr 14mins
I had a shower and then it was time to go to the ward. As soon as we got to our room visitors arrived and came steadily for the next 3 to 4 hrs.
The after pains were phenomenal, worse than labour, but they gave me regular panadeine forte so that helped.
The next day I had a shower and I was washing myself and out came these 2 big clots about the size of tennis balls if not bigger. The mw came in and saw them and said ?Oh, they are significant clots arent they?. Because I had, had a slight temp since birth and because of the size of the clots they decided I might have an infection (I would say from the effort it took to break my waters) so put me on some heavy duty antibiotics.
Day 3 my milk came in and it came in hard. I did not feel the best and my breasts were red from engorgement. I had ice packs on them and pain relief.
We stayed in hospital for 5 days. We went home on Thursday night, 21st August.

If you got this far well done, i know its long.

Thankyou for reading our story :D

lovely kristi, thanks for sharing!

Wow! Thanks for sharing, it's great to hear the whole story not just the birth! Well done!

Thanks for sharing your story. SOunds like an amazing expereince and I am so glad that you had such a supportive environment with ppl who really did care so much about you. I kind fo felt like I was reading a good book where you are just dying to know what happens next. :)

awesome kristi!! lovely story :)

Great story! Thanks for sharing, Kristi. I love that you got to deliver her yourself - how wonderful!

Thanks so much for sharing your amazing story :D

Thanks for sharing Kristi. After all your trouble it sounds like you had a lovely birth.

kristi...all i can think of to say is WOW! well done

Sounds like you had a fantastic birth, congratulations!!

Thankyou for all taking the time to read and reply to my birth story, i really appreciate it. I know its long so thankyou for hanging in there and getting to the end :D

And thankyou for all your lovely comments :D